UAB Assistant Professor Dr. Bertha Hidalgo recently completed the UCSF Research in Implementation Science for Equity (RISE) Program, one of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Programs to Increase Diversity among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research (NHLBI-PRIDE). The PRIDE Programs are highly competitive, all-expenses-paid training opportunities designed to provide the mentoring and training critical for junior faculty from underrepresented groups in biomedical research to become successful scientists involved in heart, lung, blood, and sleep research.

The NHLBI established these training programs in 2006 and there are 7 sites across the country that offer this training. Thus, through her completion of the UCSF-RISE program, Dr. Hidalgo has joined a large and highly accomplished network of PRIDE alumni, including UAB’s own Dr. Tiffany Carson, who also graduated from the UCSF-RISE Program in 2016.

The implementation is aimed at translating research evidence into everday practices.

The UCSF-RISE program involves two intensive Summer Institutes focused on implementation science and career mentoring, which are hosted by the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations. The implementation science component of the program focuses on a multi-disciplinary set of theories and methods aimed at improving the process translating research evidence into everyday health-related practices, in particular examining how interventions can better integrate into diverse practice settings with a community-engaged approach. Implementation science holds particular promise as a mechanism to address the disproportionate burden of cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases in minority communities and the challenges in treatments of these conditions.

The careers-in-progress component of UCSF-RISE consists of sessions designed to strengthen participants’ self-efficacy for career development, including building skills for paper writing, grant writing, oral communications, and information sessions on the NIH, particularly the NHLBI. The delivery of this programming is grounded in social cognitive career theory and specifically addresses the needs of underrepresented minority faculty.